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How We Created the JuicyKits.com Brand

Here is neato some behind-the-scenes info about the ideas and process behind the JuicyKits.com brand, including our naming, product images, and copywriting. Our awesome new business cards arrived this week from Moo.com and we thought it would be cool to show you guys our thought process in getting our store online with a strong, cohesive brand strategy and identity. Read on, juicy babies!

Juicykits.com Concept

Quick, here’s our 17-second elevator pitch! [quote]Juicykits.com is an online store that sells DIY terrarium kits to hold succulents and air plants. We support our products with high quality instructional articles and videos and we donate part of our profits to a clean water charity.[/quote] We started Juicykits.com because we’re fans of succulents and we don’t live in places where we can garden outdoors. The idea for our business is that our DIY terrarium kits make it so that people don’t have to buy all the various materials in large quantities from various retailers, like we had to – soil from the gardening store, activated charcoal from the pet store, planting containers from the home decor joint, etc. And the supporting element of our product is high quality instructional videos and articles. Lastly, we didn’t want to just start a business to make money, that’s not enough of a motivation. So we researched some non-profits that would conceptually make sense with our product and we decided to donate a percentage of our profits to a group called charity: water. More about them near the end.

The Brand

[twocol_one]Every idea needs a catchy name. After going through a huge list of names, we decided on “Juicy Kits,” which pretty much describes our product offering of juicy succulents and DIY kits. Plus it’s fun to say and has a little edge to it. Oh and, of course, the domain name was not taken. We created a mood board of images from brands that have the same “feel” and similar goals (including Moo, Tornobambino, and Tom’s Shoes), which allowed me to design the Juicykits.com logo. The cursive font in the logo basically shows that it’s kind of a personal and expressive brand. The dot on the letter “i” is made up of some juicy succulents that look like the jelly bean succulent(Sedum rubrotinctum).

The color scheme was started using mini business cards at Moo.com, which allowed us to put as many different photos as we want on the back of our cards. Nifty! Finally, for the tone of voice of our website copywriting, we decided to keep it as close to our informal speaking voice as possible so that the site really was like hanging out with us in our little shop.[/twocol_one] [twocol_one_last]

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The Product

We allow people to choose the plants and the container for their DIY terrarium. We select the best modern designs for the vessels and give them clever names that reference design history (The Egg), popular culture (The Sideways), or famous personalities (The Holy Diver). Customers choose their plants from a catalog of succulents and cacti that we’ve decided work best in small, self-contained planters. Then we ship all the terrarium materials, including fresh plants, pebbles, soil, and activated charcoal. We also sell accessories like a terrarium tool kit and decorative gemstones, and plant food for succulents. For more detailed info about what’s in a typical Juicykits.com kit, check out this article on What’s in a Juicykits.com Terrarium Kit.

The Website

Juicykits.com was built on How-To blog articles and videos, which we continue to add to our blog. You can subscribe to our Youtube channel to receive notifications. We’ve done a lot of research on succulents and desert plants and we’ve made a lot of beginner’s mistakes like overwatering our succulents or putting them out in direct sunlight, so we’ll create blog articles that tell you about the do’s and don’ts of desert plants. We also experiment all the time with various containers and materials, so we’ll give you crafty ideas too. If you wanna get these articles when they come out, you can join the Juicykits.com Mailing List.

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The Charity

So we’re super duper proud to finally have a business idea where we can give back to the world. We’ll donate 10% of our proceeds to a group called charity: water, who have really inspired and impressed us with how modern and transparent their operation is. charity: water uses 100% of their donations to bring clean water to people in developing countries (They build water pumps and wells and stuff in poor countries). They have a great website with nice case studies and even a world map that shows all of their water projects, how much money was spent, and how many people were helped. Super cool.

Well, hope that was a fun read. Help support us by clicking the buttons below to share this site. Or better yet, buy one of our gorgeous terrarium kits from our store. A version of this article was previously published on my personal blog at baovocreative.com but this one has more cool images and stuff.

Bao

4 thoughts on “How We Created the JuicyKits.com Brand”

emilysays:

Hi! thanks for sharing your story, it’s so inspirational. I too am looking to start my own e-commerce site using WordPress. I was wondering if you would be so kind as to share some plugins you use for your store or recommend I look at to build my store? I make hand-made jewelry and love the idea of having the ability to really customize my site with plugins offered on WordPress and possibly offer my customers customization options like different bead colors, etc. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks:)

Hi Emily,
It will depend a lot on how many products you plan on having and how much you can spend up front. We use WordPress because blog articles were important for us and WooCommerce was a good fit for our small e-commerce needs. WooCommerce has various plugins that you can purchase that will allow you to add options like the ones you mentioned. We use some of these WooCommerce plugins: “product add-ons,” “smart coupons,” and “cart add-ons.” You may have to spend several hundred dollars to get the software plugins you need and also a lot of time or labor costs to implement the software. But if you have only a few products with not many options, you might look into a service like Shopify or Big Cartel. Good luck!
Bao

Hi Emily and Bao…
Just discovered your site today… I’ve been dreaming of succulents for a while now and I’m really excited to start learning about and growing my own. My husband and I will probably order some soon :) Just wanted to say… We love that you are a part of donating to the water charity, and also that your site is simply beautiful! Thanks for sharing your creativity with the world.
Kelly and Chris Collins

Thank you Kelly and Chris. We’re very encouraged by your note. We hope we can continue to help people create beautiful living art and contribute what we can to a better world. Looking forward to sending you some juicies!